The online system parents have to use to apply for their children to attend Grade R and Grade 8 next year is the perfect tool to separate the haves from the have nots. It’s a significant example of how those responsible for creating a landscape for equal education are failing dismally, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
Carlyle Roberts woke up early on Sunday morning with a dream. His dream was a dream that kids in Hanover Park are not conditioned to dream. And yet he was so close he could touch it.
Carlyle and his teammates were playing in the final of their Western Province cricket league T20 competition at Newlands on Sunday. The final took place after the team picked up promotion to a higher tier next season.
For Carlyle, the vice-captain of Fish Rite Hanover Park Cricket Club, a victory in their third final at Newlands in five seasons was not to be as they were pipped by their opponents in a match that went right down to the last ball.
But it didn’t matter that they finished runners-up. By just reaching the final they had already exceeded expectations. They’re a club that comes from modest roots. Their home ground needs a lot of attention. And they don’t have the resources many more established clubs have.
Added to their challenge, is the regular gang warfare that plays out in the streets of the suburb they represent that often sees practices cancelled. Drug abuse in the area is rife too. And there is abject poverty everywhere you look. But none of Carlyle and his teammates make any excuses when it is easy to just give up.
There is no time to wallow in their defeat this morning because for the core of the team it is back to school or back to work after the long weekend of dreaming.
At one Hanover Park school this morning, a special effort is being made by a group of volunteers to register and enrol Grade 7s and Grade Rs for Grade 8 and Grade 1 respectively next year. Many of the more than 50 000 people in almost 10 000 households don’t have access to the internet or WiFi. The documents they are required to upload online require scanners. This exclusively online process is not built for the people of Hanover Park.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has made provision for pop up registration sites at selected malls for people who live in communities like Hanover Park. None of them are located within walking distance of Hanover Park.
It makes sense then that the chairperson of the shining light in the community, Fish Rite Hanover Park Cricket Club, is at the forefront of the drive to help parents to register their kids for ‘big school’ next year. Ashraf Allie took to Twitter to lean on people and enlisted folks who could spare an hour or three to work from a school hall alongside him.
He has arranged with at least two schools in the community to make their halls available to volunteers armed with a laptop, a scanner and data.
Generous folks like Unity Ruiters, Reaaz Ahmed from Good Hope Meat Hyper and one of the club’s partners, Dean Roberts of Plantfuelled Nutrition, were able to help out with scanners. Others from all over Cape Town like Sipho Hotstix Mabuse’s agent and music entrepreneur Martin Myers, Toni Murphy, Susan Margaret, Igsaan Hugo and Claude Petersen are joining Ashraf and giving their time. They will be joined by ANC MP Faiez Jacobs and MPL Khaled Sayed. And yours truly.
We don’t know if we will hit critical mass ahead of the April 15 deadline. Today, we will see how the slow and poor performing website the WCED puts up for this important function holds up. There will be kids whose parents will miss the deadline through no fault of their own. Their impediment is that they are poor.
The misfit crew of volunteers calls on everyone who can assist in a community similar to that in profile to Hanover Park to do the same. While Manenberg has reported challenges as well, there will almost certainly be issues in Mitchells Plain, Langa, Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Hangberg. As well as the many, many other impoverished suburbs in our city.
Perhaps when the Western Cape MEC of Education, Debbie Schaefer, tries to figure out why thousands of children haven’t been placed in high schools or in Grade 1 next year she will finally realise that not all the communities she serves have access to her enrolment, registration and application system, the internet or data.
Just yesterday, we celebrated Human Rights Day. Our basic human rights ensure that each child has access to education and at least a fair shot of reaching for their dreams – be it becoming an engineer, a doctor or a Proteas cricketer. We also know that with every right comes responsibility. It is thus the responsibility of those who run our schools to make sure those rights to attend those schools are guaranteed.
For Carlyle Roberts, the loss in the T20 final will not define him. He, his teammates and the rest of the community have to just fight that bit harder next season against odds that his opponents won’t have to contend with. For the thousands of parents, the challenge of enrolling their children is but another hurdle in the reality of an unequal society. They will just have to try a bit harder for their children’s human rights to attend school.
WATCH:
Hanover Park Cricket Club has remarkably reached three T20 finals in just five seasons. Fish Rite Hanover Park Cricket Club vice-captain Carlyle Roberts takes us behind the scenes on the road to the T20 final at Newlands Cricket Ground on 20 March 2022.
Video: Loud House Media
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Pictures: Azeezah Gool